


Long Ago and Far Away

by axolotl_lan



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, I trample over the canon garden, I'd say which dwarves are in this, My First Work in This Fandom, beware the tulips this is an AU, but SPOILERS.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-07 00:42:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axolotl_lan/pseuds/axolotl_lan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Also known as that time Belladonna ran off with her young son. <br/>Or DON’T MAKE ENEMIES WITH DWARVES, SERIOUSLY!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Ago and Far Away

She had been a bit rough and tumble in her tweens, what Took worth their salt wasn’t? Perhaps, she took it a bit farther than most but only because she had the means to and the opportunities for her to do it arose; See article ‘Gandalf is a terribly, bad absolutely no good influence who is forbidden from meeting her son during his tween years’. 

Now, she would never regret her adventures with Gandalf and making friends of elves and all such things because if that were the full extent of her adventures that would have been absolutely fine. However, Gandalf as good a friend and wizard that he is, had a truly warped sense of what was and was not dangerous and collected enemies like others collect doilies or shiny baubles. 

Well, one day our esteemed Belladonna Took became a Baggins married a lovely man and had a son and that was well… peaceful. Very nearly perfect that. If she had sometimes felt like the wanderlust was sneaking up on her well her dear dear Bungo would often catch her before she could realize it herself and have already sorted out the details of a pleasant walking holiday and for a close relative to care for Bilbo while they stretched their legs a bit. As it was quite proper to have private times as a young vibrant couple with only one child and very improper to bring said child on those sorts of occasions. Now, if their walking holidays were a bit tougher and more exotic than the couple who walk to the nearest inns and ‘sleep’ in, well so be it.

On this particular day Bella had taken Bilbo to the market and her darling son just nearing his tenth year was begging to join her and Bungo on their holiday the next day. Not that he didn’t enjoy being with his Took cousins for the next fortnight but that he would miss them and adventures sounded like such fun. His words weighed down on her like a cold dread building on the one she had been feeling for over a month. It wasn’t the familiar desire to move to be free of the shire for a bit it was different even if Bungo assured her that a good trip would pick up her spirits.  
“I could be terribly helpful, I could light the hearth when we said camp Mother, or make the beds” Bilbo insisted.  
“Darling one, you may be permitted to light the hearth at home now, but you would most certainly not be lighting any campfires, and there would be no beds to make, just rolls to pack and unpack” Bella smiled and ran her hands through his curls. “Your time will come soon enough be safe and stay home for now. Your aunts and uncles and cousins love it when you visit.”  
Bilbo crossed his arms and huffed and Bella laughed happily at the sight as there was nothing so adorable as a child thinking that pouting would get them anywhere with her. A more malicious part of her wondered at why she enjoyed their irritation so much.   
Bilbo finally uncrossed his arms and skipped ahead of her bounding onto their property calling out to his father.  
What lay inside their home was a horror she never would have let her son see.   
Blood was everywhere. Tables and chairs overturned, quilts ripped and her darling Bungo’s wedding ring on the ground. In the study she found a dwarf stabbed straight through with a letter opener she had made for hers and Bungo’s second anniversary. There was blood on the dwarf in places that indicated someone else had been injured, and the dwarves blade was a few feet away also covered in blood. Belladonna Baggins wanted to scream or tear the home further apart but what she did instead was tell Bilbo to run to the gardeners place and only step in if he could hear them behaving normally. The gardener and his family were boisterous and any silence from their home to be distrusted.

She checked every crevice and saw no evidence of her husband still being home. She found her pack and her husband’s as they had been before, ready to travel. She replaced most of her husband’s clothing with her son’s then added in the last minute food portions for travel. Whatever happened in her home she was not staying here with her son for a second attempt. If Bungo lived she and Bilbo would scour middle earth to find him. Should he be dead. Well, his killer would find a similar fate. The clothing on the dwarf was reminiscent of the sort worn by those of Ered Luin, the vagrant dwarf kingdom. She pulled her favourite knife from her apron and sliced off each of the beaded braids on the dwarf and put them into a small cloth satchel she kept in her apron pocket. Dwarven authorities from what she could remember could often use braiding and beading styles to identify a dwarf without ever seeing his face. 

The gardener and Bilbo came back. “You are to get the Thain. My son and I are leaving at once, there will need to be a call out to the bounders and a well manned search of the woods for my husband be he alive or well…”   
“Lady, it’s not good to think that way-“ She waved him off, “I know, however a search must be done. I am headed to the Blue Mountains. Send a raven to the central post there and I will retrieve it if Bungo is found before I reach there. I will be there for important business either way.” She nodded and turned to her son. “Bilbo, you had wanted adventure, now we will have it. You will stay by me and should I say to hide, you will hide, run and you must run- do you understand?” Bilbo nodded and sniffled and said something about his father that made Belladonna’s heart ache. She wanted to rock him and say it would all be fine and begin to clean the mess of their home and trust Bungo would return as if he had simply been hiking but she knew in her heart what she must do.

She remembered the time she and Gandalf and her elven friends had spurned that dwarf child who then died of sickness. The rage of that dwarf child’s family, at that time her only excuse was a lack of comprehension of dwarven ages, they all appeared bigger and older than her, and that her life in the shire had taught her that dwarves were thieves, brigands and vagrants all and not to be trusted at their word. She had followed the lead of her elven friends and her wise old wizard and that early on in her life had done little introspection on their actions. She knew she had made an enemy that day but for each year without retribution she had expected it to have quieted that dwarven family’s fury. But for them any time period below 20 years must be well within reason for carrying a grudge especially if the stories she learned of after of family feuds that lasted hundreds of years were true. A family feud in the shire at most took about three generations to solve, but that was also due in part to how quickly here generations can sneak up on one.  
She walked with Bilbo carrying both packs until they reached the donkey her and Bungo always used for their holidays. She saddled it and put both packs on it’s back along with Bilbo and then walked along beside. 

 

They were headed off.  
To seek either her husband, redemption, or all their deaths, Belladonna refused to simply wait at home for answers.


End file.
